On Faking It and Making It

I’m a pretty big advocate of the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it,” mostly because that’s what I’ve been doing for years now and it seems to be working pretty well for me. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not fooling anyone on a daily basis in order to get ahead in life; I’m fooling myself every second of the day so that I can go about normal everyday things without succumbing to an anxiety attack. Hi, I’m Miranda and I’m painfully awkward (with a little bit of social anxiety on the side).

I know many people feel awkward as often as I do, and most of them have an anxiety disorder like me. Many of them completely avoid social situations because they can’t handle the jitters or can’t bear to face the impending discomfort of interacting with other people. Sure, it can be rewarding to meet people and connect, but those fuzzy feelings are bound to go to shit as soon as they say something that’s met with an awkward silence. Those with anxiety are the flakiest people on the planet, and for good reason. The burn of humiliation is one of the worst feelings a person can experience. I mean, can you really blame them?

I’m not perfect, but I pride myself in being a pretty un-flaky human being. You see, I’m better at lying to myself than to other people, which technically should be pretty tragic, but in the spirit of “fake it ‘til you make it,” I really rock the shit out of it. Instead of dwelling on an embarrassingly awkward conversation I had with a coworker, or that time I accidentally threw a full can of beer at someone’s head at a party, I convince myself that these things didn’t happen. You can’t feel shitty about something that never happened, dummy! I can tell myself that I’m a confident, interesting person and then act like one. It’s pretty cool. It might be an indicator of some other underlying psychological disorder, but it’s cool.